Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Poems from Floetry Friday Over the Years

First and foremost I am meI am prosperity that engages adversity onevery battlefield and he who never leavesthe premises with nothing less than a victory.

I am music!A sweet melody that resonatesmelodically within the eye of a hurricane-- Don't worry, please let it rain.

Because I am shelter!He who can protect you from theharshest weather because my skin istough leather, but yet soft like silk.

I am a quilt!Built precisely for you to rest your headupon/when you for a brief moment are nolonger feeling strong and not because you are weak.But!Simply because you needed a rest.

I am restitution!Paying back a debt to society thatrefuses to create preemptive solutiontowards issues that are drasticallyafflicting our children.

I am the future, past, and present!Symbolic to a petty peasant whose thoughts were once reminiscent to thefoulest rubbish that could ever flow intoa gutter, but my brothers and sistershave helped this pretty peasant to becomemore effervescent so it's only destinythat I now travel in a different direction.

Because you see, I am a vision!A poet painting lexiconic pictures andleaving fixtures of prisms kineticallyplaced upon your wisdom so therefore youcan see through all of the lies that theycreate within the walls of these prisons.Can ya' feel me?Good!

Because I am also love!A manifestation of how each and everyone of you choose to define me.But let me remind thee that loving metemporarily is no longer satisfactory sochoose carefully when choosing to indulgein me because...

I am addictive!Similar to Tylenol/codeine/morphine shotin the vein of your elite seal team in Iraqi landOr better yet Afghanistan, I am frivolouswith my way of life so you can call me an AmericanBut please understand...

That my I am is genuineA true composition of the man I amGod like I amMade in his exact image I am, so original I am.Came into the world in the form of I am.A born again I am, spreading the word of love amongst the people who are indesperate need just like I am.The blood of my blood I am.The flesh of my flesh I am.Three days from now you can resurrectthese words into your mind and even thenin subconscious form I will appear before you I am.So!In the end I am everything that I say that I am.The epitome of I am.Because I am the I am of all I am.The who, what, no matter where i am,No need to ask how I am.When I am performing at the best of I am,and if you have to ask why I am the way that I am?Then (psst!) you, must not have been listening!

"A Reflection" - By Heide Bruckner

Man, this is scaryStanding up in frontWith all this anticipation.Eyes big, wide open with grandexpectation of hearing an insightOr some inner fightThat I have waged within my heart,My mind, my body, my soul.

What I CAN offer is a few words.ReflectionsOf how my conception of what isWrong, right, violent, immutable,irrefutable, secretHas changed.Is changing.

These big ideas rearrangingFrom one simplified puzzle of dualitiesTo the overlapping, overmapping, overarchingThemes of the human experience.

How mainstream thinking of prisonHas become in itself an "ism" --A way of isolating and categorizingAnd pretending that security existsEven when inequality persists.Violence not of the individual fistBut of a system which largely fails itself.Fails to educate or empower or address the root of thisMessy, gnarly, knotted overgrown shrub

Of personal, structural, community relationsThat cannot be redressedBy pruning its "unsightly ends."By thinking a sort of lock-up cancompletely mendThe lack of water, poor soil, no sunWhich has caused the green fromthese leaves to runAs far away as possible.

Come back, green life-giving nourishmentNot rhgouh green pants or greencamo or other establishmentsThat the very balanceCan only be restored when the talentsOf all are recognized and legitimized,Not marginalized , ostracized, orcriminalized.

By now I am less scared of readingAbout the ways of reseedingThis shrub. It must grow tall andStrong, interwoven, and supportive.

I am less scared because I am herewith you who are hereLike everyone class in Fridays past.Because I'm in a room full of all of usas peers,Because of this, I have lost my fear.